Monday, June 16, 2008

I worked as a teacher for 2 ½ years. As I taught in the evening, my students were adults, with very few exceptions. They were sweet, kind and hard working people and teaching them was a wonderful thing.
One day, two Mormon boys stopped by the school and offered to lecture the students, so they would practice their English skills. They told us about their mission in Brazil, the people they’d met, the places they’d seen. And this may come as a surprise to you, but I clearly remember what they said about the food. :)

Among other things, they were completely crazy about guaraná and passion fruit juice. They told the students they did not know how they were going to live without those beverages once they were back in the States.

Passion fruit is a huge favorite of mine and its flavor and smell are intoxicating. Marshmallows made with passion fruit juice? That sounded too fabulous not to try.

Generously grease a 17.5x25cm shallow cake pan and dust it liberally with confectioners’ sugar. Combine passion fruit juice and gelatin in a bowl and set aside.

Combine caster sugar and 1 cup (250ml) water in a saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring, until sugar dissolves, then increase heat to medium and cook for 5-10 minutes, without stirring, or until syrup reaches 125ºC/257ºF on a sugar thermometer. Remove from heat, add passion fruit mixture to syrup – be careful, there will be some steam coming out of the pan - and stir until gelatin dissolves.
Meanwhile, using an electric mixer, whisk egg whites and salt until frothy. Gradually add passion fruit mixture, whisking continuously on medium speed until mixture has doubled in size, then slowly decrease speed and mix until mixture is warm (about 40ºC/104ºF). Pour into prepared cake pan (spread evenly with a lightly oiled spatula, if necessary) then dust top liberally with snow sugar. Stand at room temperature for 3 hours or until firm. Using a sharp knife, cut marshmallow into 2.5cm squares and roll in snow sugar to coat – I turned the whole mixture onto a cutting board lined with baking paper; it was easier to cut the squares.
Store in an airtight container between sheets of baking paper at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.

* the original recipe called for “snow sugar”, which they describe as a confectioner’s sugar with a vegetable fat added to prevent the sugar from absorbing moisture and dissolving (available from specialty food stores); I used regular confectioners’ sugar instead and it worked fine.

I'm not surprised at all that you were a teacher. And I'll bet you were a great one. Like Lydia, I have not made marshmallows from scratch, but I love those squishy confections and I love passionfruit, so there you go. This recipe's going on the 'TO DO' list. hugs, mari

Sigh. Unfortunately I have yet to really taste what those missionaries experienced. The passionfruits here suck! I had passionfruit cream in the States, though, and it was lovely :) I can only imagine how sweetly tart these beauties are!

Ooooh, yum! I was sold after reading the title - I love anything passion fruit. Shame it's so expensive here, and we don't have the bottled version (except all the sweetened ad artificially flavoured stuff).

How wonderful making your own marshmallows.To buy 10 passionfruit here in the UK would be ridiculously expensive and the passion fruit juice is a more sensible option.I would love to try one of your marshmallows!

oh my goodness, are you serious! wow... how fantastic... i'm going camping in about 2 weeks. i grew up making s'mores with marshmellows, of course. these would be a great substitute to the old marshmellow in a bag!